On February 1st, teachers, train drivers, civil servants, university lecturers, bus drivers and security guards from seven unions walked out and mounted a massive demonstration in London. It was the biggest day of industrial action for more than a decade in the UK. But as well as being a protest against low pay it was also a protest against the government’s proposed new anti-strike legislation which has been passed in the House of Commons, and is now due to go to the House of Lords before becoming law.

It is estimated that roughly half a million workers took part in the strike and the demonstration, consisting of roughly 100,000 Public and Commercial Services Union (representing striking civil servants), 300,000 teachers from the National Education Union, and 70,000 lecturers from the University and College Union, along with ASLEF union train drivers and London bus drivers.

The strike left almost no trains running in England and thousands of schools were shut. Museums and galleries were closed and Border Force checkpoints were manned by army personnel.

The PCS chief, Mark Serwotka, anticipates many more such strike days as it “makes sense” for different unions to work together to get results. He added that there were more than a million workers who fell under live strike mandates.
In the health sector what is underway is the biggest wave of strikes in the history of the National Health Service. The nurses had already gone out on strike on the 10th, 18h and 19th of January, the ambulance staff on the 11th and 23rd of January, and on the 26th physiotherapists and support staff from thirty NHS services – one in seven – staged a 24 hour walk out. On 6 February ambulance workers and nurses struck together for the first time, breaking with the traditional professional divisions that have characterised so many strikes. The nurses were called out by the Royal College of Nursing union.

An important fact was that the ambulance workers didn’t give in to the government’s request to let the hospital managers know if and when they were striking, meaning that the army had to be called in at very short notice to cover them.

On 6 January it was announced that junior doctors would go on strike for 72 hours in March if their forthcoming ballot produced a majority for industrial action, with the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA) declaring that junior doctors had suffered a “staggering and unjustifiable” 26.1% cut in their incomes since 2008. On 9 January the union started balloting more than 45,000 junior doctors on taking industrial action and this could eventually lead to an escalation of the mounting wave of walkouts by NHS staff over their salaries.

On 25 January 300 workers employed by Amazon to work in their Coventry warehouse staged their first ever UK strike in a protest over pay and conditions, walking out over a “derisory” offer of a 5% pay rise to £10.50 an hour, whereas as far as the workers are concerned, an acceptable figure, that goes some way to covering the rising cost of living, is no less than £15 an hour.

The Trade Union Act of 2016

In response to the wave of strikes, which is unlikely to let up any time soon, the UK government recently announced their plan to introduce a new anti-strike law: the Strikes, (Minimum Service Levels) Bill 2022-23. The new law is designed to allow the bosses of key public services (health, fire, ambulance service, rail and nuclear commissioning) to sue unions and sack employees if minimum service levels are not met. The Guardian reported that “the new law will also back employers bringing an injunction to prevent strikes or seeking damages afterwards if they go ahead”.

Pat Cullen, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (the main nurses’ union) pointed out that “safe staffing levels, that are set in law, are what we want to see year-round, not just in these extreme circumstances. Sara Gorton (The Unison unions’ head of health) reiterated this point, stating: “the public and health staff would welcome minimum staffing levels in the NHS every day of the week. That way people wouldn’t be lying in agony on A & E (Emergency Room) floors or dying in the backs of ambulances. But limiting legal staffing levels to strike days and threatening to sack or fire health workers when there are record vacancies in the NHS show proper healthcare isn’t what ministers want. The government is picking ill-advised fights with NHS employees and their unions to mask years of dismal failure to tackle pay and staffing.”
Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, was quick to say that it would repeal the new legislation if elected back into power; somewhat at odds with his prohibition of a member of his shadow cabinet appearing on picket lines back in the Autumn, and with his recent description of the Labour Party as “the party of business”.

Indeed his predecessor at the head of the Labour Party had similarly pledged to repeal the previous batch of anti-strike legislation that was introduced a few years ago (the Trade Union Act 2016), something Keir Starmer has been curiously silent about until now!

When the 2016 Act was first introduced, it was thought by its supporters that it would severely hinder the ability of the unions to mount effective actions, but the sheer determination of the striking sectors to fight back has meant that this has not been the case.

As the current strikes are largely circumscribed by this legislation, it is worth taking a look at some of its key provisions:

1) as opposed to what happens in Italy, strike action has to be previously approved by a vote among the members of the trade union promoting it. The 2016 law raised the threshold of how many members need to approve a strike for it to go ahead: at least 50% of those with the right to do so would now have to vote in order for their results to be legally valid, and of those voting in a ballot on strike action at least 40% would have to support it.

The International Communist Party advises workers that they shouldn’t subordinate their struggles to democratic formalities and shouldn’t make a fetish of it. The strike is not a manifestation of opinions but an action that takes place within an ongoing social war, a fire which, once lit, can either spread further or be extinguished. A strike, even if it is a minority that sparks it off, can, in given circumstances, grow and achieve victory.

Class trade unionism does not submit to the absolute principle of vote counting, which is to defer to individual calculations and orientations. The final outcome of the war between classes will be determined by force, not by forms of representation.

2) The vote to approve strike actions happens at the moment by means of a postal ballot, and not in assemblies in which workers are physically present. This practice, too, is opposed to class trade unionism. Votes to decide on whether or not to undertake, continue or interrupt an action are certainly necessary and serve to enhance the morale and confidence of the workers themselves, and to indicate to the union leaders what the best decisions might be. But such voting, when possible, should be by means of assemblies, in workers’ meetings and with a clear vote for or against. This means that those who attend the assemblies and who are prepared to openly take a position in front of their work colleagues will be selected. On the other hand, in secret, or postal, ballots, the vote of a blackleg has the same value as a worker prepared to sacrifice himself for the collective interest. Certainly the French practice of “renewable” (reconductible) strikes is preferable, in which workers meet in assemblies and make decisions by a show of hands.

And in a stroke of irony, it is to be noted how difficult it is to vote by postal ballot during a postal strike!

3) Another key point in the 2016 law is the two weeks notice which the unions must give to employers before taking strike action. This rule is analogous to the one introduced in Italy with Law 146 of 1990, which over the years has gradually been made more stringent, in some cases resulting in even longer notice periods. For the ruling class it is an excellent means of dampening workers’ combativity and making struggles less effective. What’s more, it allows companies to make adjustments in their production schedule, hire blacklegs, and prepare media campaigns and other actions against the workers’ struggle. Class trade unionism combats such restrictions: the workers go out on strike without warning, their intention being to hit the employer and his business.

4) The Trade Union Act of 2016 also wants there to be “supervision of the trade unions on the picket line”, and it provides a series of rules whose lack of clarity offers further opportunities to declare the pickets illegal due to simple bureaucratic errors.

5) And finally, there is the “opting in” or “opting out” issue: a keystone of the traditional opportunism in the British labour movement. The issue concerns whether a contribution is made to a union’s political fund by a union member automatically or not. The 2016 Act decreed that union members now need to “opt in” to the fund, rather than, as before, paying into it being the default position. And since the body which stands to gain most from the various political funds is the Labour Party, it’s no wonder then that Starmer recently announced he would abolish this legislation if the Labour Party got in at the next election.

Or was it just this clause he was thinking about? It is not difficult to predict that the collaborationist leaderships of the unions that are hand in glove with the regime will do their utmost to present as a big gain what are in fact just minor changes to the law, precisely such as making paying into the political fund once again the default position.

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The present wave of strikes in Great Britain confirms that, despite these restrictions, the class struggle cannot be suppressed, and that it is not a thing of the past, as the scribbling of the many hacks sold out to the regime would have us believe. The bourgeoisie has an interest in such lies being reinforced, but it knows very well what rubbish it all is. Indeed it is very conscious of the inevitable return of the struggle of the proletarian class, in order to fight for its immediate economic needs. And it is because of this that the bourgeoisie certainly doesn’t just rely on ideological arguments but adopts legal instruments as well. But it is walking a narrow path: on the one hand it limits as far as possible the right to strike, forcibly holding back the general movement of the working class. On the other hand, it fears that if such measures are too excessive, they could have the opposite effect to that desired, that is, restrictions that are too restrictive could push the defensive movement onto the terrain of illegality, which could favour its radicalisation and its passage onto the terrain of political class struggle.

The level at which its suits the ruling class to set the bar of illegality varies according to the historical period and the balance of class forces. In certain contexts, the bourgeoisie may see itself constrained to abolish the liberty to strike and also the trade union organisations. This generally happens in wartime, but also when the workers’ struggle assumes greater breadth and strength.

The ruling class will do anything to preserve its political domination. It prefers to use the democratic lie, but it will never hold back, when that is not enough, from throwing itself into the arms of fascism in order to resist the communist revolution, and in order to defend capitalism to the very end.